This is what it looks like after...

[Mike Buckley]

This is what a major league baseball looks like after it gets hit and careens off a black sign.

I was holding a large lemonade in my left hand as I sat down in my seat at a Baltimore Orioles home game in 2006. The batter hit the foul ball before I was fully seated and the ball then hit the advertising billboard, which luckily for me slowed it down considerably. I didn't even get out of my seat. I extended my right arm behind my wife, who at this point was terrified and had left her seat in fear. I simply watched the ball come straight into my bare hand.

This style of photography is new to me, so C&C is encouraged more than ever.

[Donald]

Good work in terms of the detail picked up. It would be easy to over sharpen an image like this.

As someone who was involved for many years, as a player and then as administrator, in a sport that also involved hitting a ball with a big bit of wood (see www.shinty.com). I'm interested in the construction of the ball, particularly the type of stitching used that doesn't create much a ridge and the join points.

[allenlennon]

i love it, especially the second one.

[Mike Buckley]

You might like this explanation of the construction of a baseball: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Baseball.html

Immediately after leaving the game, my wife and I joined her sister and her sister's fiance (now married with children). He had been a pitcher in college baseball and at the time was playing in an organized league. He had never held a major league baseball and was surprised to learn that the stitches (seams) had such a sleight profile. He explained that it speaks so well of major league pitchers even more than their obvious talent that they can properly grip a ball with so little texture in the seams.

I'm glad you like the detail in the images. I worked really hard at that (mostly because I'm so new at controlling the lighting and don't yet find it intuitive.)

[Donald]

You might like this explanation of the construction of a baseball: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Baseball.html

That is extremely interesting. It is the exact same construction as a shinty ball and that used in shinty's Irish cousin, Hurling. But the seams certainly are certainly worked to a much higher standard in terms of not having the ridges.

[Mike Buckley]

Donald, it's really coincidental that you mentioned shinty, which I had never heard of. Just a few days ago as my wife and I were watching the Olympic games, I wondered why there was no sport that was basically ice hockey without the ice. It seems that that's a reasonable description of shinty, at least to the novice who knows nothing about the sport. I notice that it's not an Olympic sport. That's a shame.

[Mike Buckley]

Thank you, Allen. It might interest you (as it does me because I'm so new at this stuff) to know that the slight glow that separates the golden stand from the background is produced by a speedlight that is completely hidden by the baseball.

[Donald]

Donald, it's really coincidental that you mentioned shinty, which I had never heard of. Just a few days ago as my wife and I were watching the Olympic games, I wondered why there was no sport that was basically ice hockey without the ice. It seems that that's a reasonable decription of shinty. I notice that it's not an Olympic sport. That's a shame.

What is as interesting is that the story is told (though probably not true) that ice hockey developed as a sport because Scottish soldiers serving in the British Army in colonial Canada couldn't play shinty during the winter when things froze over, so took their shinty sticks onto the ice.

I think that story has now been debunked by proper research, but it would be nice if there was some truth in it.